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Riot has never once made a sensible post about leaver protection.

Their reasons in the many discussions about this have never, not once evolved beyond "it would open up room for abuse". Which to me, feels like a hidden code for "Dota 2 already has a system and we aren't going to imitate them"

I feel this way because their argument makes no sense: You can't bully people into leaving so the rest of their team doesn't get punished, people in soloque are selfish to a fault, and there is a report and ignore function for people who would try to somehow "force" another player into leaving to take one for the team.

Another point is that, common logic these days is, "everyone is effected by leavers equally, so it balances out." Yet they won't accept that a leaver forgiveness system would ALSO effect everyone equally? It makes no sense. As it stands, Dota 2 is significantly more competitive for solo que (Which is where most people play), this is because every game is an honest to god 5x5 because systems were made from the very beginning to ensure that each matchup will always be even or it simply won't count.

Riot is focusing all their efforts on promoting their E-Sports brand and neglecting the community that has gotten them to where they are today.

You know what would have been x10 more useful than an honor system that is nothing more than a pretty ribbon? A leaver forgiveness system. Prove me wrong.

The problem I remember seeing is that they didn't want to risk it being exploited. If you had a premade, they could just have one dude take the bullet, so his friends wouldn't lose LP. Next to that, I remember Lyte (I think?) suggesting that Leaver forgiveness would lead to a team pressuring one member to leave, so that they didn't lose LP. Even if there was a method of detecting premades so that the former could not happen, the ladder could still be a major issue.

That said, I'd still like it if there was a way for the game to detect when someone has been AFK from the start and never connects, thus granting a loss forgiven because it was an unfair 4v5 the entire game.

The problem I remember seeing is that they didn't want to risk it being exploited. If you had a premade, they could just have one dude take the bullet, so his friends wouldn't lose LP. Next to that, I remember Lyte (I think?) suggesting that Leaver forgiveness would lead to a team pressuring one member to leave, so that they didn't lose LP. Even if there was a method of detecting premades so that the former could not happen, the ladder could still be a major issue.

That said, I'd still like it if there was a way for the game to detect when someone has been AFK from the start and never connects, thus granting a loss forgiven because it was an unfair 4v5 the entire game.

I addressed your post about a team pressuring one player to leave, it makes no sense. Not only would it show in Tribunal logs, people aren't going to want to take a hit for people who just raged at them and gave them ****, it makes no sense.

And again, I repeat myself: Dota 2 has no-fault systems in place for teams with leavers on it and the solo que there is 10 times more competitive from the very bottom to the very top of the ladder. That is because these systems allow a competitive atmosphere where issues like leavers and intentional feeders are stomped out instantly rather than being allowed to fester and ruin games.

Again, there is no legitimate response, Riot has dropped the ball completely when it comes to encouraging a competitive community, they've focused so much on E-Sports at the very top that they're ignoring the rest of the pillar.

I'm not opposed to taking a second look at LeaverBuster or Leaver systems in general; however, it's all about prioritization on what problems we work on because we simply cannot work on every system at all times.

If every player in this thread looked at their match histories, on average, they'd see very few leaves. We know that a percentage of leaves/afks are due to ISPs and connection issues or hardware, and there's nothing we can design to fix those problems. After you account for those 'organic' leaves/afks that we can't influence, you have what we call the potential space where we can improve leaving/afk.

We know that if we reduce or remove the penalties for all teams if a person leaves the game, that a few things happen:

1) Leaving/AFK actually goes up
2) The number of games that actually completes goes significantly down

The problem with the above is that although players feel better when they get a leaver in their game and can leave without penalty, they get frustrated over time by the sheer number of games that will never finish because people are just leaving and quitting en masse in games. This 'hidden pain' is difficult to explain, but is very easy to see in the data.

I'm open to thinking of solutions for the specific problem of a person not connecting to a game because I think that's a miserable experience that is completely not the fault of anyone in the game; for example, maybe restarting a match if a person never connected in the first 2 minutes.

I'm not opposed to taking a second look at LeaverBuster or Leaver systems in general; however, it's all about prioritization on what problems we work on because we simply cannot work on every system at all times.

If every player in this thread looked at their match histories, on average, they'd see very few leaves. We know that a percentage of leaves/afks are due to ISPs and connection issues or hardware, and there's nothing we can design to fix those problems. After you account for those 'organic' leaves/afks that we can't influence, you have what we call the potential space where we can improve leaving/afk.

We know that if we reduce or remove the penalties for all teams if a person leaves the game, that a few things happen:

1) Leaving/AFK actually goes up
2) The number of games that actually completes goes significantly down

The problem with the above is that although players feel better when they get a leaver in their game and can leave without penalty, they get frustrated over time by the sheer number of games that will never finish because people are just leaving and quitting en masse in games. This 'hidden pain' is difficult to explain, but is very easy to see in the data.

I'm open to thinking of solutions for the specific problem of a person not connecting to a game because I think that's a miserable experience that is completely not the fault of anyone in the game; for example, maybe restarting a match if a person never connected in the first 2 minutes.

My last 4 placements have had leaves, as well as many of my previous games. I've even had days where it's happened almost every game.

I'm open to thinking of solutions for the specific problem of a person not connecting to a game because I think that's a miserable experience that is completely not the fault of anyone in the game; for example, maybe restarting a match if a person never connected in the first 2 minutes.

For people that don't connect in say the first 2-4 minutes(usually the time a game can start to see the outmatch) why not give a loss prevented to the team that had the disconnected person? You can still give a win to the opposite team, and if need be, for the ranking system, subtract LP from the person that didn't connect, because after all, that person is the person to blame for not leaving his team with much of a fighting chance to win, even if it was connection issues with the game.

To make it so it can't be exploited, make it so it ONLY applies to games that someone didn't connect in, to be sure someone can't "ragequit" the game for giving a team first blood and giving his team a free loss prevented. This would also work with people that duo with their friends so that they don't have the mindset of "we are losing, someone leave so we don't get a loss" as it would only work in the games where someone doesn't connect.

then the outcome should still be win/lose standard settings. But if a game is lost because someone didn't connect to the game, then it just doesn't seem right to punish 4 other people with a loss/LP loss because they lost in a game they were outnumbered in.

The problem with the above is that although players feel better when they get a leaver in their game and can leave without penalty, they get frustrated over time by the sheer number of games that will never finish because people are just leaving and quitting en masse in games. This 'hidden pain' is difficult to explain, but is very easy to see in the data.

People (myself included) are hit with a very "visible pain" when they sit there having to play a 4v5 (and a 'hidden pain' when this happens now and then over time).